


Arachnovampirism

by SimplerUser



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Mind Control, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 20:36:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplerUser/pseuds/SimplerUser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose becomes a vampire and there is far less glamour than literature would imply.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arachnovampirism

"Why do you think you're here?"

You don't know. Of course you fucking don't. You just end up places, and they all look the same. Like someone took a template and slapped it down again and again, a little further away each time, all the frames melding together till they filled the horizon. There's a word for that, but it's jammed at the back of your throat. The simile is better anyway.

Vriska uncrosses her legs and plants each of her feet evenly beside the legs of her chair. The chair you're sitting on is hers too, but the one her ass is in is more hers.

Talking is an effort, so you don't; if you can't say ten words you're not going to dignify your company with a single grunt. This makes your options rather limited. You could go with a shrug, if you wanted to appear as someone younger, or male. Dave always had that angle of your household covered, and you're loath to rob him of the claim. With that possibility eliminated, you settle for the next best thing - raising an eyebrow is classic sardonic.

She laughs. "Got to breathe in first, Lalonde. Running on oxygen is for people, not us. _You_ still need the whole flow past the voice bits to talk." Voice bits. She probably knows what vocal cords are, and almost certainly the larynx. But you're done underestimating Vriska. When you met her, you'd politely asked - in a roundabout manner - how old she was. It was impossible to tell by conventional standards, and her answer of laughing and offering you another drink didn't clarify anything. Now, you guess five times your age. Lack of breasts doesn't offset how practised her smile is, or how fluidly she moves.

With utmost reluctance, you follow her advice. Never has breathing made you feel more wretched. It's embarrassing too; who has to follow advice to _breathe_? You can only surmise she's done this before with how studiously her eyes are fixed on your lips.

"Am I to believe-" Your voice is a tortured croak. You could call your mother and she'd hang up saying _lol, nice prnk!_ \- and rightly so - "That you are a creature from fables of old, and have elevated me to the same? Thus robbing me of my - pardon the phrase - god given right to a beating heart?"

You sound like sandpaper. Before, you sang sweet melodies, dripping in charm. There are a lot of things you're going to miss.

"Pretty much!" Now that you care, you realise her voice doesn't come across like someone took a nailgun to her neck.

You test the waters and attempt modulation, saying: "I'm a vampire. You are too."

Her grin splits until it's ready to swallow the world. "No fucking shit."

 

\---

Vriska deposits you into a room she declares yours. It doesn't feel anything like your room. Your room is pink. It's still got pieces of art you drew when you were ten; the violin you wish you could play this very second. It would give you something to occupy yourself with. Pretending you're in a movie or any media rife with teen melodrama, you fall back onto the bed, forcing creases into life beneath you. Ceilings stay out of sight and take the sky's place as unnoticed territory, and -- you shake the metaphor loose. You could never use that.

The ceiling is painted a different shade to the walls: darker. Stupid choice - darkness vacuums up light. It should be paler to distribute it, though not white to show off the --

You squint. Of course. Spiderwebs infest the corners. Not dirty; they all look fresh, and you suppose they are. Vrika likes spiders, says they move better than other animals. She could be right, but you never inspected them close enough until you met her, and you've only seen one since. You had pressed your thumb down upon it, and its exoskeleton let go with a pop. If it wasn't for the red splotch on its back you would have let it go. Because of Vriska. Vile woman. You snort. Vile vampire. There isn't any point to assigning gender to descriptions, after all. Particularly futile with Vriska. You can't find the will for surprise that her tastes run towards blood. Should have known.

You're not breathing again; a sigh squeezes out of your lungs anyway, and emptiness consumes you. You muse along the way, spiraling down into a treacle pit curiously devoid of feeling. You never cared for vampires outside of contemplating the psychological appeal of a creature that will kill you, or make you the same as it. Someone should have something profound to say about the way you care even less about vampires now that you are one, but you're alone in a blue room with a black ceiling.

An unholy shriek shatters your concentration. The phone - you fumble it while trying to balance not choking on a hysterical laugh and dragging in air. The phone is Vriska to a T, cerulean, retro, and has no problem with showing that it was custom made. It has her logo slapped in the centre of the dial. It's still ringing as it sits in your hand. You frown, press the pompous centre, and lose the bit of air you had captured when that's the solution to shutting it up. You pause a split-second to wrangle your air back in. "Trapped vampire princess line. Who is calling?" You monotone into the phone. Monotone isn't a verb, but it sure is what you did.

"You know we're the only ones in this place, right?"

It took you two weeks to pick up clues to her state of mind under the crusty bravado she lays out. The extra week hasn't let you do it by voice alone.

"Don't think about trying to wire tap your way to the outside with that thing by the way. It's Equius' idea of a joke, an inside line only in the house-" Mansion, you'd think. Mansion is what this place is. Hell, castle would fit beautifully compared to house. "- just these pieces of plastic. I've never had anyone to use them with, so cheers for the test run!"

You rub your eyes out of habit. Knowing you don't have to sleep and finding Vriska exhausting aren't mutually exclusive.

"This room has a bed." Young author prides self on articulation: states the obvious. Media field day. Your snark doesn't stop for anyone. Vriska rustles on the other end of the line, and two slow claps follow.

"Fuck, I shouldn't laugh. You know the change can do that if you get it too late. Stupidity, I mean."

You stretch the cord and sit incredulously on the nonsensical piece of furniture.

"It's caused all sorts of shit. That could literally be surprising to you! I've seen it do paralysis, blindness. Oh! Even killed off all the personality in one chick. Man, that sucked."

"Becoming a vampire can blind you?" you ask.

She misses a beat. "Yeah, it can. Really fucking rare and it's not a big deal for her, but still." She's rustling through the line. You can hear papers crinkling, and then typing clacks; you're in a mansion with no outside phone line but internet access, apparently. Vriska humour, you're sure.

"How long was she dead?" You should chew her out. Try and escape. She's talking to you on the phone. Having a conversation. You're stuck.

Vriska snorts, and you cringe. Always how it goes. "Can't turn the dead. Used a defib to get her heart going, and then sorted it out from there. You should have seen her fucking face when she realised this wasn't the afterlife." She barks a laugh and it's foreign to your ears, different from her usual mocking or malicious one. It's not even the quiet one she used when you were shaking off sleep and blew air in her face.

"I'm certain it was quite the sight for you. What a pity she couldn't share the fun, even if she'd had a mirror and her vision intact." You can't help but to continue, "perhaps the revenue you save from phone bills could channel into research funds. Vanity for vampires."

You chatter back and forth. She keeps mum about everything important. Conversation drifts towards weather, meanders to literature and movies - she warns you that it's hard watching them because of the "shittastic" frame rates - and then slips back to food. You kick yourself through it all for not asking about the void in you stretching bigger.

The floor beneath your feet isn't there when Vriska strides in, her phone in hand and its wire curving out the door. Your eyes are wedged open and you panic for a moment, but only inside your mind; every muscle in the part of you that isn't your mind is frozen. Your muscles have seized up and ten minutes must have vanished without you saying a word. It's not until she's disturbing your line of sight that it occurs to you she is _in your head_.

She kisses you, and it's like the first kiss you ever had - your first kiss with a boy you loved. It had the phantom prickling of tears that weren't really there. The same terror even. You never thought you'd get that again, your first kiss was supposed to weather you with experience and grind out your fear. You can't move.

But Vriska doesn't confer with you after it, doesn't weigh in with _that was okay, right? haha, because we can try again! but only if you want. if you do not want then we won't because you shouldn't do stuff you don't want to do! unless it's eat your veggies. uh, rose?._

Vriska's approach is to deign to assume to _consider_ your ears might work. "You've got it now, right?"

You've got it, and you feel so cold. "Thought so. Not hard, really. Your mind is a fucking piece of work, by the way." She's behind you, and she pulls on your shoulders until you're lying in the same teen angst position as before. This time though, she tucks a blanket around you so it feels more like she's playing house, and you're her doll. "Here," she says, "For that chill." It makes as much difference as a bandage on a gunshot wound.

She laughs - her cruel one this time - and pats you on the shoulder. "Course, it's not going to help." You project a glare and she flips you the finger, "Honestly, this all should make you happy. Not many newbies get the luxury of talking while turning to stone."

Your body screams at you when you tell it to fucking _move_. An eternity of agony later, your mind kicks in, and relief permeates through you. Pain, even imaginary pain, keeps you tied with a knot to reality.

"Up you get." You glare at her as hard as you can (not at all). She's behind you, now. "Aw, can't you even think up a metaphor for that?" Your glare intensifies to that of a thousand bee stings. "Muuuuuuuuch better. That's a pretty shitty glare though, what with your eyebrows not moving."

Her wrist snaps into sight - blinking mentally apparently works like F5 for refresh. You do it again, and catch her drawing a knife across her wrist. Never figured her for a cutter, too self-absorbed. "Fuck you. You want the blood or not, Lalonde?" Ah, you've lost your Rose privileges. "I can just leave you here like a rock to-" Rocks don't rot. "Fuck right off! I'm going out on a limb for you." She's not. And what a perfect scowl. Her arm lowers to your mouth anyway and you latch onto her wrist. You don't think about any of the implications. "You're avoiding thinking of purple elephants there, Rose."

You keep sucking and she hisses. You find it in you to move your tongue, lick and lift your head. Small achievements lead to big ones. Vriska laughs, "You don't believe small leads to big _anything_."

Vriska's mind-reading gimmick is dragging on so, once you're sure you can, you lick the blood off your lips, inhale, and say: "Fuck you." Vriska leans over you and beams, like you're her prize pet. That's probably an entirely accurate analysis. Next thing you know she'll be trotting you out on a leash. Shit.

"You could do that."

Caught off balance, you reply with eloquence: "What?" Parsing Vriska is like parsing Dave's raps on drugs, you just end up pretending you understand Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

"Fuck me. Sex'll be way better now you've changed." You'd laugh if you could handle it. Her hair is drifting down in chunks past her face, and she's grinning like there's no tomorrow. Strength is becoming a term you remember, so you use it to shuffle off her lap, only take a brief pause half way to remember how waists bend.

You drawl out, "Will it now?" and lock your elbows and wrists as you grip your knees. Can't send all that effort to ruin and let yourself tip sideways or fold up.

Vriska lifts free of your mind now and the difference is like night and day. Your thoughts don't have pressure on them, no weight to their flow, the same as trying to write when someone is scrawling judgement on the way your pen moves. You're not doing well at keeping your estimations of Vriska's abilities accurate. You were so sure you'd finished thinking her reach was shorter than it is. Now she's out of your mind and you're _you_ again, your heart that doesn't beat shudders as you think back. She crept in slowly. Or maybe you walked in. She set up a trap, wrapped you up and treated your mind as her own until you didn't know not to believe it.

You snap back, only to hear her reply: "Totally! It's fucking amazing. There's a reason all the literature makes us hot as a goddamned sun."

You nod. You're thinking. Who knows if your mind will ever truly belong to you again? Vriska set up pathways you didn't have before, could have done it to alter those in her own mind. She takes your absent minded nod as a yes and presents you with a kiss. It's still as good as before, so you push back. This night unfolds the same as your other nights with her. Except the scraps of blood from your lips and lifted from the line where her cut has disappeared fill you with life, make you move, make it eight times better. She purrs at your thought: she's back in your brain already. And you don't mind her mind, though you feel you should.

 

\---

Years down the track, you come back to her. Memories from before she sunk her teeth into your neck and fed you her blood for the first time stick out as silver needles through the quagmire of all your time as a dead thing. She's the same as ever, but you don't let her have access to your head. Sets her right on edge, poor old girl. Rightly fucking so; you laugh in the privacy of your mind. Vriska has said that to so many of the others she's sent scuttling away. You stole their thoughts of her and left them better off.

She's feisty and gets her hands on an extraordinary sword. Wood shouldn't glint, but Vriska Serket makes it so. It doesn't matter, your giant wooden needles are more suitable for duelling.

You don't say a word. Couldn't if you wanted to. She taught you to breathe, and you locked all of that down as soon as you discarded her.

"Too weak, Lalonde!"

She never plays by your rules, or anyone else's. _She_ speaks at length: about your long-dead mother, the boys you couldn't save, the girl who didn't know why you appeared as young and beautiful as you always will when her own heart was a week from giving up. Vriska knows about them, but that only gives you more power because she goes for the wrong weak points. She doesn't insult you, your movements, your actions or your choices; she aims for the things she believes you care about. You're parrying and dancing past her like a bow on a violin. You rake scratches from her wrist up to her elbow with moves that distract and irritate until you slip under her stupid, _stupid_ lunge and plunge wood into her heart.

Vampires don't crumble like they say. Instead they return to the point at which they died. All the air escapes her lungs and she laughs the laugh you only heard that once. "About fucking time," she sighs out. You stab her again and walk away.


End file.
